These blurbs originally appeared in the Mass Appeal section of RVA #33 Summer 2018. You can check out the issue here, or pick it up around Richmond now.

University of Richmond Grad Launches Gender Fluid Brand

University of Richmond isn’t exactly known for its fashion program, at least not in comparison to VCU, but Kadeem Fyffe made it work. Fyffe started as a journalism major, seeking a well-rounded liberal arts education, but soon shifted to Studio Arts to study fashion, which led to a semester abroad in Milan where he’d work on the opening of Milan Fashion Week.

Fyffe would go on to study at Parsons School of Design and design for Michael Kors, but his biggest achievement was the launch of his own label, Muxe. “I wanted to start a brand that embodies and has a political component to it,” he said. “It’s important for people who are creative to have a voice or platform to speak out and express your beliefs.”

Fyffe’s gender-fluid label features t-shirts of different lengths, with various statements and designs. Some of them are almost politically wonkish, such as his #SAYTHE7 tee, which features a row of the seven words the Trump Administration asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to use any more.

Fyffe will release an extended collection this summer featuring crop tops and tanks. By Spring 2019, Muxe will roll out a more complete collection of men’s skirts and unisex pants, along with more statement tees.

“I wanted to start off slow,” Fyffe said. “I plan to keep my finger on the pulse and release items that are expressive at just the right time.”

See the full collection at muxenewyork.com.

Pretty Powerful Exhibit Elevates Current and 19th Century Richmond Fashion

From the inaugural ball gown worn by First Lady of Virginia Pamela Northam in 2017 to silk gowns designed in 1875, The Valentine’s current fashion exhibit features an inclusive and thoughtful collection of clothing from female designers, tastemakers, and boutiques.

Current designers and boutique owners including Rupa Singh of Love This, Bella Weinstein of Handyma’am, and Deborah Boschen of Verdalina received their own spot in the story woven by The Valentine’s curators. One display case features 10 designs from Maxwell Reid, who creates wearable art in her home in the Fan District today.

“A well-crafted wardrobe acts as a highly visible performance of identity,” reads a placard in the exhibit, introducing a series of outfits and pieces worn around the region during the past century.

Pieces like a 1948 gingham playsuit and 1960s Vera Maxwell ensembles created for former Thalhimers Vice President Elizabeth Bauder are displayed with detailed stories and quotes about how the garments were made, who wore them where, and how they fit into Richmond’s cultural history. Bauder’s story, for example, chronicles her rise up the Thalhimers corporate ladder from copywriter to Fashion Coordinator, to Vice President and Director of Sale Promotions.

Visit the exhibit between now and January 27, 2019. Learn more at thevalentine.org.

Rising University of Richmond Junior Zach Ryan Grows Fashion Start-Up

Zach Ryan has been founding fashion startups since he was 15. It all started when the Connecticut native spent a summer in Nantucket.

“I saw all these startups by college kids,” he said. “I saw that it wasn’t just about clothing. It was about a lifestyle, building your own world. I did more research and got to know the founders of some of these brands. They inspired me to start my own clothing brand at a young age.”

Ryan just finished his sophomore year at the University of Richmond. At 21, he’s started four companies, one of which he sold in high school for five figures. His namesake clothing brand, Zach Ryan, is one of his most recent ventures. The collection features polos, henleys, and cardigans with a coastal New England aesthetic.

“Ultimately, this combines everything I love into one melting pot: design, sketching, photography, expressing yourself, sharing it with the world,” he said.

Thanks to connections from his internships, Ryan works with manufacturers and factories used by Tommy Hilfiger, Armana, and H&M. The high-quality garments are sold online, with more than 90 percent of his business coming from Instagram, Ryan said. The University of Richmond Bookstore also carries Zach Ryan pieces. Ryan is working to develop custom collections for more bookstores on college and boarding school campuses.

As for what’s next, Ryan says he will release a new shirt design this summer. He’s also working on developing a new app.

Like the garments they’ve made and worn, the relationship between women and fashion is deeply interwoven with the history of Richmond. A new exhibit at The Valentine Museum, “Pretty Powerful: Fashion and Virginia Women,” explores the individual stories of these designers and the women who wore their clothing.

The exhibition contains garments from the 19th century to the current day. Speaking to Kristen Stewart, curator of the exhibit, RVA Magazine got a behind the scenes look at some of the fashions worn in Richmond through the years and how women have shaped and evolved that industry.

Courtesy Jay Paul/Richmond magazine

“In Richmond and elsewhere, milliners and dressmakers were one of the first woman to serve as independent business owners and entrepreneurs,” Stewart said. She learned this from reviewing archival copies of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Richmond Inquirer and reading the classifieds.

Stewart said the women used the language of entrepreneurship in their ads, presenting themselves as experts, rather than in the “subservient language that we often see with people presenting themselves as a service provider. They’re making themselves the sought after quantity.”

One of the women featured in the exhibit, Sarah Sue, was a prominent Richmond milliner, who created some of the most vibrant and creative hats from silk, straw, flowers, lace, and ribbon inspired by her trips abroad. Sue worked for the largest department store in the south, Miller & Rhoads, from the early 1930s until her retirement in 1973. Stewart described her as a world traveler, adding that she would “justify that travel as inspiration and pull her themes from her experiences.”

Courtesy Jay Paul/Richmond magazine

Among the exhibits is Sue’s hat collection, “The American West: Land of Enchantment”, released in the fall of 1970. The hats in this collection capitalized on a growing interest in world fashion, bringing new elements to American hat design.

The interest in world fashion turned Richmond into a melting pot of various influences from far away and close to home. Contemporary designer Carter Johnston, who launched Grove Avenue women’s clothing boutique CCH Collection in 2012 with her sister Alston Daigh, took her inspiration from the women closest to her.

Stewart said that Johnston’s pieces “were inspired by the style [of her] family members,” adding, “CCH Collection was actually named after her grandmother Catherine Claybourne Hall.”

In comparison, designer Ottie Windmueller took inspiration from far off lands and shared that love of travel with future generations of designers. Windmueller served as chairwoman of VCU’s department of Fashion Illustration and Costume design, now The Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising, from 1965 to 1976. Stewart said, “Her main innovation was the practice of traveling with design students, taking them to Europe and New York for inspiration. She’d also bring in talent from those places to come in and speak to students,” something that was highly unusual but now is standard practice. Windmueller was a world traveler and a refugee from Germany during World War II, something that Stewart thought inspired her unusual approach as a professor.

Western interest in foreign designs also benefited foreign designer, Stewart said, pointing to Hanae Mori. Stewart described her as “one of the earliest Japanese designers to work in the Persian tradition selling to a western market.” In 1965, Mori presented her first collection in New York titled ”East meets West”; in 1975, she showed her collection in Paris.

In many circumstances, women’s skills transcended their race and social status. Franny Criss was one of these success stories, according to Stewart. “Franny Criss was an African American dressmaker who grew up in Richmond. She started as a seamstress who traveled home to home, as many did,” Stewart said, before she became successful enough to open a business on Leigh St.

Criss’s fame grew quickly, and she worked with high-end clients white and black. Stewart ascribed her success to the wealth she built in Richmond, which even let her purchase a townhouse in Harlem near Madam C.J. Walker, the first millionairesses in America.

Courtesy Jay Paul/Richmond magazine

Throughout the whole exhibit, pieces showcasing the journey and achievements of Richmond fashion designers and wearers are on display. One garment in particular, an Anne Klein skirt suit, speaks to the contemporary age of female leaders and entrepreneurs. Stewart said it was on short-term loan from Dress for Success Central Virginia, a program that helps local women with professional clothing to improve their position. After the show, it will be returned to the nonprofit for the women they help, Stewart said. “We are very excited to have a physical representation of that mission and we feel that that mission fits the narrative of the show very well,” she added.

The design and organization of the show are remarkable in showcasing significant garments from the past and present. It is easy to get lost in the fantasy of how these innovative women worked to make the fashion scene both in Richmond and internationally what it is today. The work of Sarah Sue, Ottie Windmueller, Franny Criss, and many others can be seen at the “Pretty Powerful: Fashion and Virginia Women” exhibit now until it closes on January 27th, 2019.

“Rather than focusing just on Monument Avenue tonight, I’d like us to take a look at the landscape of the city,” said Bill Martin, Director of The Valentine Museum. “So, if you’re here to talk about the removal of the statues, you’re in the wrong place.”

Martin, along with Richmond Magazine, Capital Region Collaborative, Kelli Lemon (Coffee With Strangers) and VCU professor John Accordino, made up a panel for an event Monday evening meant to highlight the connection between monuments and tourism in the city, as part of its ongoing Controversy/History series.

Instead, it exposed the deep divide that exists within Richmond, born from the construction of six Confederate statues on Monument Avenue more than 100 years ago.

These statues have inspired countless protests in the River City, rallies crowded with Richmonders condemning the monuments, and even spray-painted graffiti on multiple monuments — all for the sake of drawing attention to social and racial justice.

The Valentine Museum fell short of appropriately applying history to today’s issues and addressing the racial charge behind these monuments, and instead, focused mainly on the history of monuments in Richmond, and later, on the economic value of the Confederate statues.

The museum, along with its partners, polarized entire groups of Richmond citizens by discussing the topic of monuments as a niche academic issue, when it is an inherently political one.

The event began with a clarification from Bill Martin that the evening would not be about the controversy surrounding the statues on Monument Avenue, but instead a discussion on Richmond’s elaborate history of building monuments.

Photo by The Valentine

And yet, throughout this history lesson, Martin danced around the topic of Confederate statues. He specified that only the Robert E. Lee monument was planned — it was the only one with a roundabout. Everything else came years later, he said.

However, at one point, Martin did touch on the opposition to the Lee statue. The opposition was voiced by Kelli Lemon quoting John Mitchell, Jr., an African American who was once editor of the Richmond Planet, a newspaper founded in 1882 by 13 Richmond African Americans freed from slavery. In a May 1890 article, Mitchell wrote the statue was a “glorification of a lost cause“, which Lemon voiced to the audience. It’s here that The Valentine succeeded, if only for five minutes, in mentioning racism and Confederate statues in the same breath.

What was promised to be a simple history lecture quickly turned into a spiel on the value of historic tourism, by John Accordino, Dean of VCU’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.

There is undeniable value in what, Accordino calls “heritage tourism” — tourism designed to let tourists experience places and activities that authentically represent the past and present to the people that live there. And according to Accordino, heritage tourism brings in over six billion dollars in Virginia every year.

Accordino also conveyed at the event, that Richmond’s Confederate statues could be used as heritage tourism if represented the right way.

“Richmond’s Confederate monuments do not offer an experience, or tell a Civil War story — as they did not exist during the Civil War,” he said. “But they do remind us of the story of a lost cause, which may attract heritage tourists.”

Accordino emphasized that Berlin, Germany could serve as an example to appropriately provide heritage tourism, and still make money. He used the example of stumbling stones in Berlin, which are brass plates embedded in the sidewalks, inscribed with names and life dates of those persecuted and executed by Nazis.

They are meant to remind citizens of the tragedies in Germany’s history. In Accordino’s opinion, it is possible to do something similar here in Richmond.

“Taking on and accepting parts of your history is important,” Accordino said. “I don’t think we want to take away history. I want to tell the complete history, and acknowledge our full story.”

There are several things wrong with this statement. First, Accordino compares the Confederate statues, built in the 1890s, to Berlin’s stumbling stones, built in the mid-1990s. These are two extremely different monuments — one is to commemorate the victims who were murdered during the Holocaust, and the other is a symbol of the glorification of Confederate generals, who, at the time, fought for the preservation of slavery.

Inscribed in Jefferson Davis’ statue on Monument Avenue are the words “crescit occulto velut arbor aevo fama”, which means “may it grow as a tree through the ages.”

The inscriptions on stumbling stones or “Stolperstein”, are tiny square brass bricks, each one inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution located at their last place they lived or sometimes worked. One commemorates those who died in concentration camps, not those who advocated the oppression in the first place.

They do not memorialize the greatness of those who once believed some humans were lesser than others.

Second — and this is most important — none of the people who should have been there for this conversation were there. Thanks to some questions answered by the audience using clickers in the beginning, I found that 74 percent of the audience was white. Forty-three percent of them made more than $100,000 per year, and the rest weren’t far below.

The Valentine Museum had opened up this conversation about how monuments could help with tourism, and refused to talk about what they mean in today’s conversation over race and social justice. On top of that, there were such few people of color there who could actually insist on having a conversation about these issues.

Instead, it was one white man telling an audience full of rich, white people that they could appropriately tell the story of slavery and oppression of African-Americans, while still keeping the monuments up, while still making money. All the while still memorializing Confederate generals who fought for slavery.

At the end, Accordino opened up the panel for questions. Susan Winiecki, of Richmond Magazine, moderated the event. She called on an African-American man who — finally — voiced the thoughts that had been festering in me since the beginning of the event.

“I feel sick,” he said. “The only time you talked about the systemic racism that relates to me is when you mentioned Jim Crow, softly,” the man said. “You’re thinking too much about cost-benefit analysis and not enough about human-benefit analysis. You’re saying we should create tourism based on those that have been and continue to be exploited.”

Accordino and Winiecki, comically, were at a loss. Winiecki kind of just stood there — and Accordino fumbled to reassure this man that he wasn’t trying to undermine anybody.

The worst part is, I don’t think the entire panel even realized that the discussion they’d been having for the past hour and a half was so wildly skewed — because it was an academic lecture for the privileged, by the privileged.

There was such little mention of race, of poverty, and of oppression. Instead, most of the discussion was about money, economics, and history. Had they even thought about how the words they’d written down would sound, once they spoke them out loud?

The Q&A section moved on without any further controversial comments. It was easy to pretend the African-American man, in the beginning, had never spoken.

A lady in pearls and a sweater set raised her hand and said she thought it was a good idea to make money off heritage tourism like the statues, then use that money to tell the “full story.” She called it an investment.

I left thinking about how deeply some people had buried their heads in the sand, convinced that they knew what the solution was when they’d never even really seen the problem.

Richmond Jazz Society’s curated exhibition, “Virginia Jazz: The Early Years,” is currently on display at the Valentine until April of 2018. In this exhibit, we find the untold history of some of the most prominent local figures in jazz, told through photographs, correspondences, performance footage, and programs. Larger-than-life names like Ella Fitzgerald and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson hail from Virginia, born and raised — but they’re not the only ones.

Bill Martin, the Executive Director of the Valentine, expressed the sentiment that so often when Richmond history is looked at, we focus only on its political history. “In many ways, some of the richer, more interesting parts of life in the city are its music, its theatre, its art scene,” Martin said. “They are not often represented in museum exhibitions.” It was the Valentine and Richmond Jazz Society’s goal to do just that.

“Interesting takeaways were the location of jazz clubs,” Martin said. Most people know about the recently revived Hippodrome, but these clubs could be found all over town. “Some were above funeral parlors,” Martin explained. “They would go all night, because no one downstairs would care. There were lots of them all over Jackson Ward.”

Richmond Jazz Society has an extensive collection on the history of Virginian jazz, and the artists who call the Commonwealth home. “Until now, there has been no opportunity for the public to view what Richmond Jazz Society has stored,” Martin said. Ingrained with history itself, Richmond Jazz Society is one of the first interracial jazz organizations, and one of the first organization with an interracial board. They have spent a number of years curating an exhibition to not only be held at the Valentine, but with the intent to travel.

B.J. Brown, the secretary from Richmond Jazz Society, explained that the exhibition began as a preservation project and an extended thank-you from the Society to its constituents. “We decided to honor the Richmond and Virginian jazz legends, and were able to identify over 50 individuals who had done extraordinary things,” Brown said. “We had discovered musicians we had never heard before, going back as far as the early 1900s.”

Brown elaborated on some of the lesser known facts and individuals portrayed in the exhibit. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was born right here in Richmond, but what most people don’t know is that his contribution to contemporary dance was paramount. “He actually changed the way people dance. Where tap dancing was more flat-footed, he brought it up on its toes, and then the heel,” Brown said. Bojangles elevated tap to the elegance that it is now, and we take for granted.

Another name worthy of spotlight is that of a lyricist from the 1920s named Henry Creamer. Popularized by Louis Armstrong and the crew, Creamer was the individual who wrote “If I Could Be With You” for him. So many people have heard “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans,” but few would have guessed it was written by this Richmond-born lyricist.

Virginia jazz’s influence is not confined to the United States, either. Claude Hopkins, a pianist from Alexandria, achieved critical acclaim after graduating from Howard at 22 and moving to Paris. There, Josephine Baker named him Music Director of her theatrical production crew, which went on to be one of the largest and most successful productions in Paris.

Featured in most press for “Virginia Jazz,” a group photo of Roy Johnson’s Happy Pals Orchestra in celebration is the flagship photo for the exhibit. This snapshot in time follows the huge upset in a 1929 battle of the bands with Roy Johnson’s Happy Pals emerging victorious over Duke Ellington. Later, one of the members’ wives donated the portrait to Richmond Jazz Society.

“Virginia Jazz: The Early Years” offers knowledge on one of the richest histories in Virginia. It will be on display at The Valentine, located at 1015 E. Clay St, until April 30. Admission to the Valentine is $10 for adults, $8 for students with ID. For more information, check The Valentine’s website.

Maggie L. Walker, the first female bank president of any race to charter a bank in the United States, is getting her long-deserved recognition with her very own statue in Richmond. An unveiling ceremony and celebration for the highly debated monument will occur on Walker’s 153rd birthday, Saturday, July 15, at 10 am, at the intersection of West Broad and Adams streets, the entrance of historic Jackson Ward.

After the unveiling, attendees are encouraged to make a day around the neighborhood. Free trolley rides will be provided by Venture Richmond from RVA Trolley from Leigh to Belvidere to Marshall to 10th for the event. Many local business are participating in the event, offering giveaways, discounts, and more.

Attendees are also encouraged to stop by Virginia Repertory Theatre to learn about the Walker Theatre, the first purpose built cinema in the area and the first public tribute to Maggie L. Walker in 1936.

To learn more about Walker’s accomplishments, call the number listed on any of Untold RVA installations located between Adams and 2nd which will be up for the unveiling.

The unveiling ceremony and following activities will occur rain or shine.

Visitors of The Valentine and downtown residents will soon get the chance to enjoy the sandwiches and other goodies from Garnett’s Cafe when Garnett’s at the Valentine opens this spring.

A sister restaurant to the Fan’s Garnett’s Cafe on Park Avenue, Garnett’s at the Valentine will go in the museum’s garden cafe serving salads, sandwiches, soups, coffee and desserts. The Valentine Garden is a 15,000 square feet garden located behind the historic 1812 Wickham House

“We’re so excited to get into downtown like this,” said restaurateur Kendra Feather in a news release. “The garden is beautiful, and the Valentine is such an amazing Richmond institution – this is a dream.”

Feather opened Garnett’s Cafe in 2009 followed by Ipanema Cafe in 1998, Church Hill’s The Roosevelt in 2011, and most recently, Laura Lee’s on Semmes Avenue.

According to the release, the second Garnett’s Cafe location at The Valentine will start out with lunch from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., with breakfast service and after-work hours to follow.

Director Bill Martin said the new partnership was a “perfect match” in a statement.

We both share a commitment to the revitalization of the city and creating an amazing experience for our guests.”